I pressed the green call button.
Tristan said, “Hello?” in a groggy voice.
“My dad shot himself in the foot.”
There was a long pause. “Uh… hi?”
“I’m at the hospital now. He’s gonna be fine but.”
“Oh, wait, what, you’re serious? W-what happened? It was on purpose?”
“I have no idea. I think he was planning to shoot the guy he thought my mom was having an affair with but didn’t know where to find him, then accidentally shot his own foot.”
“Oh my God, I—fuck, are you okay? I’m still kind of confused—I was asleep. Is your dad gonna be all right?”
My cries came out in a hiccupping rush. I sank onto the bench outside, relinquishing myself to the reality that everything was going wrong.
“I’m sorry, I’m making you cry more. I’m bad at this.”
“You’re not, I—” I was sobbing now and couldn’t stop. I realized he’d never heard me like this. There was rustling on the line, like he was sitting up in bed, turning on a table lamp, keys jangling.
“Hello?” I said.
“I’m here. I’m getting dressed. I’m coming to get you.”
Sniffling, I said, “You don’t even know where I am.”
“Well, you’re gonna tell me, aren’t you?”
The sliding doors parted. My aunt walked out, for once with no theatrics.
“Actually, could I call you later?”
“You sure?”
“Yes. Thank you.”
He told me to text him. We hung up. My aunt lowered herself beside me, the smell of hotel peppermints faded. “Do you want to talk?”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“It’s been quite the day.”
I didn’t say anything. Part of me believed that none of this would’ve happened had she stayed in New York.
“You’ve got to know your mommy hasn’t been happy in a long time. She’s been trying and trying. How much does she have to try? Are you hearing me?”
I felt like a child giving her the silent treatment, but my mouth was incapable of holding sound. Tears slid into the dip of my lip.
I asked, “What if he killed himself?”
She went quiet, staring ahead. “No one told him to get a gun, you know. Or to wield it like a child. Your mommy saved him from being stupid.”
The sliding doors swooshed open again, and my mom came toward us. She was still wearing her bathrobe, which I hadn’t registered until then.
She said, “Your dad wants to see you.”
In the hospital room, my dad was wearing a cotton gown, a paper wristband like he was headed to some bleak music festival. I pulled the lone chair in the corner up to his bed. His head was lolling a bit, I gathered, from the pain medications—I prayed they hadn’t put a recovering addict on Oxy, but that was a problem I didn’t have the heart to deal with right then.
